Robert Zehnder
Turning Wheel
October
LAND is pleased to present the solo exhibition Turning Wheelby the Brooklyn-based artist Robert Zehnder.
Operating on ruminations and cycles, the turning wheel is a machine, an active mind. Imageries locus knowingly connect with a deeper sense of self, or an idea of who they are. Zehnder’s works loop in and outward of his subject, the demon or devil archetype materialized as human, left in disconcertion by the mundane cyclical nature of the human mind. We reckon our own histories and morals against focused, pulsing scenes of anonymous heads.
As stylized renderings resume to show emotion and lose form, an enigmatic relationship to color echoes formally. The pastel drawings use figures and portraits as frameworks for inner and outer environments to interact. This relationship is foundational in Turning Wheel, allowing for material and image play. Graphite drawings embody a direct approach and attitude becomes cynical, informing the pastel works as a severe and clinical system. Familiar forms maintain autonomy through behavior as performative subject.
Zehnder’s figures are victim to their own surroundings, sometimes naive and erratically innocent but always referencing an accessible logic of reality through moral filters, sign and symbol. Environment and emotion are explored in intimate scenes of introspection. These moments of pause are ones of recognition and revelation: thoughtful, curious, tender. The devil recognizes themselves in the turning wheel.
- Text by Chloé Gutmann, 2019
Robert Zehnder (b. 1992, NJ, US) is a Brooklyn-based artist. He received his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015. He was an Ox-Bow Summer Fellow in 2015 and a Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Nominee. This is Zehnder’s second exhibition at LAND, following the group show LE TEMPS DETRUIT TOUR (LET LOVE TAKE OVER) curated by Connor Lang in 2017. Solo exhibitions include Jacket Contemporary and Laura, both in Chicago, IL (US).
For press inquiries, email land.gratis@gmail.com or call +1 (816) 205-8191
The project runs October 5 through October 31, 2019 with an opening reception on Saturday October 5, 6:00-9:00 PM